If Tomorrow Never Comes
by KelleyGaither2342
Summary: i do apologize for accidently deleting some very important info. that's why the story no longer flows as it should. for those of you who've read it through to the current addition, plz enjoy what i've added. for the new readers, rest assured i'm fixing it
1. Default Chapter

If tomorrow never comes 1  
  
By: KellyGaither2000@yahoo.com  
  
Author Notes: This fic will contain non-consentual sex  
  
Prologue   
  
Barbara Gordon sighed as she leaned over the hospital bed, the long, angular floresent bulb that was bolted into the wall directly above it flickered just enough to be perceptable to someone like the woman who lay in the bed, unconscious, in a deep coma, her features bathed in the white light, complimenting her blood soaked, cropped, midnight black hair, so much so that she looked like a sleeping cherub, lying there, resperator tube that was sticking out of her nose like some violating serpent, making sure her lungs received the air neccessary for life, her chest rising and falling so naturally that it appeared that she was merely asleep, and that if Barbara could just shake her hard enough, she'd wake,flutter those ice blue orbs that had stolen Barbara's heart from the moment they met, laugh, and start the tickling game with Barbara she was so infinately fond of playing, a game that usually ended with them making love, and then falling asleep in each other's arms. It wouldn't happen that way tonight, though. As new tears replaced the brothers that had flowed down her cheeks all night long, keeping the trail open for the brothers that would fall down her cheeks, Barbara prayed to any God that cared to listen that it would happen again at all.   
  
What was so assinine about the whole situation, she thought, was the sequence of events that had led them to this place. As the sickeningly yellow tile on the hospital wall, tile offset only by the occassional white grout to both seperate the tiles, and hold them together, seemed to close in on her, and sickening mixture of Lysol, sickness and impending death gave her a distinct feeling of having the bile from her liver and settle into and burn her throat, making her exremely sick to her stomach, her mind was flooded with memories.   
  
  
  
Chapter 1  
  
"C'mon, Hel, blow out the candles, we're fucking ( I don't think Barbara would swear) starving in here." Helena Kyle laughed heartily, loving the fact that she could infuriate the redhead so. It was her twenty-fourth birthday, and, as always, Barbara had gone way over board in celebrating it. She had already had Alfred cook way too much food, and both women were so drunk they were barely coherent. Even so, Barbara was currently nursing her sixth rum and coke, Helena working on her tenth screwdriver. Even Dinah had a little buzz going, having been snuck some vodka "under the table" by her adopted big sister. Moments earlier, a sloppy chorus of " Happy Birthday" had rang through the clocktower curtusey of the attendants of the Bachanalian, a song that normally took about two minutes to sing while sober, had taken about ten minutes, as the celebrants stumbled to remember the words, several times drifting off into mumbles as the inebriated ones tried to restart the song and sing it correctly. The funny part of it for Helena was, that Barbara singing the song sounded much like an inebriated Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" to JFK on television.   
  
As she blew out the candles, everyone clapped. Alfred handed her the cake cutter, and let her make the first cut in the rich, dark chocolate cake. Alfred took his leave, despite Helena's insistance that he stay and enjoy the party. Dishes wouldn't wait, he'd said. Dinah yawned, and said she was going to bed, flipping the "off" switch on her comm as both women bid her good night.   
  
As soon as the sound of Dinah's bedroom shutting resonded through the clocktower, a quiet settled over the living room.   
  
Helena broke the silence, grinning as she leaned forward, making the leather apolstered couch protest with a slight squeaking sound as she did, her hands folded in her lap..   
  
"Babs, truth or dare?"   
  
Barabara couldn't believe Helena still loved playing this game, but, upon rolling her eyes and smiling, her jaw reclining lazily on her right fist, the arm of which was resting on the wheelchair armrest, decided to play along.   
  
"Dare."   
  
"You know you were my first. Who was yours?"   
  
Barbara's breath caught as she grinned.   
  
"Honestly? You really wanna know?"   
  
"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't."   
  
Barbara smiled as she remembered her first sexual experience.   
  
"Carolyn Lance."   
  
  
  
She was grinning until she saw the look on Helena's face. A look of sheer, unadulterated, barely contained rage had overtaken her upon hearing that the woman who had so insulted her mother's memory had been her lover's first. She silently stood, put the white bone china's plate who's deep, intrigate patterning she had been sketching with her nails, on the couch, and turned to leave, wanting to wait til she'd cooled off to say anything to the redhead. Barbara wasn't going to give her the option of that easy of an out, however. Helena was just like her father in that respect, though she'd never admit it. She could handle the stress of an ass-kicking well enough, could more than handle herself in fights where she was outnumbered ten to one, had had her ass kicked sixteen ways to Sunday on numerous occassions, and gotten up, brushed herself off, and went back for more. But when it came to telling the people she cared most for that something had upset her, an action that would require an expression of anger by means other than kicking the holy hell out of someone, Helena Kyle was about as effective in handling things as a chiuaua puppy trying to stop a burglar.   
  
  
  
As Barbara grabbed the elbow of her new, shin-length leather duster to stop her, she jerked out of the other woman's grasp roughly, knowing exactly how hard she could pull without bringing Barbara tumbling out of her wheelchair. The wheelchair-bound woman called to Helena as she left the inner confines of the clocktower, and, hearing the sound of the concrete on the ledge making contact with her raised heel sandals, she stopped as she heard Barbara stop her wheelchair behind her.   
  
"Helena, where do you think you're going?"   
  
Not turning to acknowledge the other woman, Helena spoke, her angry, raspy voice barely registering above audible, and if she hadn't been so attuned to Helena's voice, Barbara wouldn't have been able to tell she'd been answered.   
  
"Out."   
  
"Where? I need to know where you're going so in case anything happens, I can...."   
  
Helena turned to face her, the same look of rage, though deeper, chisled into her features, wind whipping her jet black locks around her face, the bright moonlight framing it, forming a errie halo around it, the tail of her leather duster flying wildly in the hard breeze. .   
  
" So you can what, Barbara? Send the kid to look for me? Jesus Christ, Barbara, I'm twenty four fucking years old, and you still treat me like I'm four! I'll be fine, alright? And even if something happens, you obviously did alright in the "someone to screw" department long before I came along, and I'm sure you won't lack in that department once I'm gone. I mean, you fucked the mother, why not just pick up where you left off by fucking the daughter? Hell, how do I know you're not breaking the kid in behind my back as we speak?"   
  
Not thinking, Barbara did something she'd never done before. She slapped Helena as hard as she could across the face, her finely manicured nails leaving four long, even, bloody scratches across the brunette's right cheek.   
  
Tears filling her eyes, and her voice, shaking with indignation, she spoke.   
  
"Fuck you, Helena Kyle. How could you say something like that? Yes, I did sleep with Carolyn, alright? But that was a long time ago, long before I ever knew you, long before there was ever anything close to an "us". I can't believe you'd even insinuate that I'd want Dinah. She is a child, I am her guardian, nothing more, nothing less. I am many things, Helena, but a pervert isn't among them. I may have fucked Black Canary, and you may be pissed over it, but I at least I can remember the names of all the people I've screwed, and can count them and still have fingers and toes left."   
  
Helena snorted.   
  
"Was she as good as me when she had you, Barbara? Did Carolyn Lance make you have to buy new sheets everytime she got a piece of ass from you like I do? Well, I'll guess we'll never know, will we? 'Cause Carolyn's pushing up daisies, and I guess I got the sloppy seconds. Guess the kid I'll have my leftovers."   
  
A death grip on her wheelchair arm rests, Barbara spoke through gritted teeth.   
  
"That was different. The circumstances were completely different to what they are now."   
  
Helena laughed sardonically.   
  
"What, I'm a nympho, and she's not? Guess who I got all my desire from, Babs? I had a damn good teacher. The kid won't be lacking, either. Not with you for an instructor."   
  
Barabara sighed, dejected.   
  
"Fine, Helena. Leave, and I don't care what happens to you, or if I ever see you again! I hope you get exaclty what's coming to you. I hope you rot in hell."   
  
As Helena spread her arms, and jumped from the eighty story ledge, Barbara turned her chair, and, upon reaching the inner sanctum of the clocktower, upon reaching Delphi, she let loose the sobs she'd been too proud to let her lover see, she mentally took back everything she'd just said in anger, and prayed for Helena's safety. 


	2. chapter 2

hjnnnnnnnnnnfytx sw3ww

Prologue

Barbara Gordon sighed as she leaned over the hospital bed, the long, angular floresent bulb that was bolted into the wall directly above it flickered just enough to be perceptable to someone like the woman who lay in the bed, unconsious, in a deep coma, her features bathed in the white light, complimenting her blood soaked, cropped, midnight black hair, so much so that she looked like a sleeping cherub, lying there, resperator tube that was sticking out of her nose like some violating serpent, making sure her lungs recieved the air neccessary for life, her chest rising and falling so naturally that it appeared that she was merely asleep, and that if Barbara could just shake her hard enough, she'd wake,flutter those ice blue orbs that had stolen Barbara's heart from the moment they met, laugh, and start the tickling game with Barbara she was so infinately fond of playing, a game that usually ended with them making love, and then falling asleep in each other's arms. It wouldn't happen that way tonight, though. As new tears replaced the brothers that had flowed down her cheeks all night long, keeping the trail open for the brothers that would fall down her cheeks, Barbara prayed to any God that cared to listen that it would happen again at all.

What was so assinine about the whole situation, she thought, was the sequence of events that had led them to this place. As the sickeningly yellow tile on the hospital wall, tile offset only by the occassional white grout to both seperate the tiles, and hold them together, seemed to close in on her, and sickening mixture of Lysol, sickness and impending death gave her a distinct feeling of having the bile from her liver and settle into and burn her throat, making her extremely sick to her stomach, her mind was flooded with memories.

Chapter 1

"C'mon, Hel, blow out the candles, we're fucking starving in here." Helena Kyle laughed heartily, loving the fact that she could infuriate the redhead so. It was her twenty-fourth birthday, and, as always, Barbara had gone way over board in celebrating it. She had already had Alfred cook way too much food, and both women were so drunk they were barely coherent. Even so, Barbara was currently nursing her sixth coke and rum, Helena working on her tenth screwdriver. Even Dinah had a little buzz going, having been snuck some vodka "under the table" by her adopted big sister. Moments earlier, a sloppy chorus of " Happy Birthday" had rang through the clocktower curtusey of the attendaants of the Bachanalian, a song that normally took about two minutes to sing while sober, had taken about ten minutes, as the celbrants stumbled to remember the words, several times drifting off into mumbles as the inebriated ones tried to restart the song and sing it correctly. The funny part of it for Helena was, that Barbara singing the song sounded much like an inebriated Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" to JFK on television.

As she blew out the candles, everyone clapped. Alfred handed her the cake cutter, and let her make the first cut in the rich, dark chocolate cake. Alfred took his leave, despite Helena's insistance that he stay and enjoy the party. Dishes wouldn't wait, he'd said. Dinah yawned, and said she was going to bed, flipping the "off" switch on her comm as both women bid her good night.

As soon as the sound of Dinah's bedroom shutting resonded through the clocktower, a quiet settled over the living room.

Helena broke the silence, grinning as she leaned forward, making the leather apolstered couch protest with a slight squeaking sound as she did, her hands folded in her lap..

"Babs, truth or dare?"

Barabara couldn't believe Helena still loved playing this game, but, upon rolling her eyes and smiling, her jaw reclining lazily on her right fist, the arm of which was resting on the wheelchair armrest, decided to play along.

"Truth."

"You know you were my first. Who was yours?"

Barbara's breath caught as she grinned.

"Honestly? You really wanna know?"

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't."

Barbara smiled as she remembered her first sexual experience.

"Carolyn Lance."

She was grinning until she saw the look on Helena's face. A look of sheer, unadulterated, barely contained rage had overtaken her upon hearing that the woman who had so insulted her mother's memory had been her lover's first. She silently stood, put the white bone china's plate whose deep , intrigate patterning she had been sketching with her nails, on the couch, and turned to leave, wanting to wait til she'd cooled off to say anything to the redhead. Barbara wasn't going to give her the option of that easy of an out, however. Helena was just like her father in that respect, though she'd never admit it. She could handle the stress of an ass-kicking well enough, could more than handle herself in fights where she was outnumbered ten to one, had had her ass kicked sixteen ways to Sunday on numerous occassions, and gotten up, brushed herself off, and went back for more. But when it came to telling the people she cared most for that something had upset her, an action that would require an expression of anger by means other than kicking the holy hell out of someone, Helena Kyle was about as effective in handling things as a chiuaua puppy trying to stop a burglar.

As Barbara grabbed the elbow of her new, shin-length leather duster to stop her, she jerked out of the other woman's grasp roughly, knowing exactly how hard she could pull without bringing Barbara tumbling out of her wheelchair. The wheelchair-bound woman called to Helena as she left the inner confines of the clocktower, and, hearing the sound of the concrete on the ledge making contact with her raised heel sandals, she stopped as she heard Barbara stop her wheelchair behind her.

"Helena, where do you think you're going?"

Not turning to acknowledge the other woman, Helena spoke, her angry, raspy voice barely registering above audible, and if she hadn't been so attuned to Helena's voice, Barbara wouldn't have been able to tell she'd been answered.

"Out."

"Where? I need to know where you're going so in case anything happens, I can...."

Helena turned to face her, the same look of rage, though deeper, chisled into her features, wind whipping her jet black locks around her face, the bright moonlight framing it, forming a errie halo around it, the tail of her leather duster flying wildly in the hard breeze. .

" So you can what, Barbara? Send the kid to look for me? Jesus Christ, Barbara, I'm twenty four fucking years old, and you still treat me like I'm four! I'll be fine, alright? And even if something happens, you obviously did alright in the "someone to screw" department long before I came along, and I'm sure you won't lack in that department once I'm gone. I mean, you fucked the mother, why not just pick up where you left off by fucking the daughter? Hell, how do I know you're not breaking the kid in behind my back as we speak?"

Not thinking, Barbara did something she'd never done before. She slapped Helena as hard as she could across the face, her finely manicured nails leaving four long, even, bloody scratches across the brunette's right cheek.Helena reached her right hand up to her cheek, knowing that Barbara had drawn blood, but for some reason, the blood that she found on her fingers seemed alien to her, and she stared at it with almost childlike wonder, as though she were seeing it for the first time, as she thinned it with her fingers, watching with mystified amazement as it made straight,watery, vermillion trails down to the palm of her hand. Her face stung as though she'd bobbed head first into a nest of pissed off yellow jackets, and held it there while they stung her over and over again mercilessly.

Tears filling her eyes, and her voice, and her whole body for that matter, shaking with indignation, Barbara spoke.

"Fuck you, Helena Kyle. How could you say something like that? Yes, I did sleep with Carolyn, alright? But that was a long time ago, long before I ever knew you, long before there was ever anything close to an "us". I can't believe you'd even insinuate that I'd want Dinah. She is a child, I am her guardian, nothing more, nothing less. I am many things, Helena, but a pervert isn't among them. I may have fucked Black Canary, and you may be pissed over it, but I at least I can remember the names of all the people I've screwed, and can count them and still have fingers and toes left."

Helena snorted.

"Was she as good as me when she had you, Barbara? Did Carolyn Lance make you have to buy new sheets everytime she got a piece of ass from you like I do? Well, I'll guess we'll never know, will we? 'Cause Carolyn's pushing up daisies, and I guess I got the sloppy seconds. Guess the kid I'll have my leftovers."

A death grip on her wheelchair arm rests, Barbara spoke through gritted teeth.

"That was different. The circumstances were completely different to what they are now."

Helena laughed sardonically.

"What, I'm a nympho, and she's not? Guess who I got all my desire from, Babs? I had a damn good teacher. The kid won't be lacking,either. Not with you for an instructor."

Barabara sighed, dejected.

"Fine, Helena. Leave, and I dont care what happens to you, or if I ever see you again! I hope you get exaclty what's coming to you. I hope you rot in hell."

As Helena spread her arms, and jumped from the eighty story ledge, Barbara turned her chair, and, upon reaching the inner sanctum of the clocktower, upon reaching Delphi, she let loose the sobs she'd been too proud to let her lover see, she mentally took back everything she'd just said in anger, and prayed for Helena's safety.

Chapter 2

"And you're sure this stuff is undetectable? I mean, you can't smell it, or taste it when it's mixed in with drinks?" He was nervous about this transaction. He sure as hell didn't want it traced back to himself. The consequences if it was were unfathomable. He didn't even want to comprehend them, and chose not to. As he eyed the street punk selling him the drugs, his nose burned with the unfamiliar smell of filth, urine, fecal matter, and the smell of recent visits of cheap prostitutes with their seedy clients in clandestine meetings in the dark alley he and the low-life bum that was selling him this stuff were in.

The guy selling him the drug was dressed in a filthy overcoat, a vermillion red T-Shirt with the sleeves jaggedly cut off, which showed off milk white, tooth pick thin arms with no muscle tone. His unkempt, shoulder length greasy hair that reeked of not having been washed in several days, hung close to his neck. His left ear was blood red, swollen to twice the size of the other, looking as though if one poked it hard enough, it would explode with green pus. This was due to an unsterile metal loop earring that clung uncomfortably close to his lobe. His unseemly ensemble was completed by ratty, torn, rockwashed blue jeans, and even older tennis shoes. The punk, who couldn't have been over 19, spoke.

"I'm tellin you, man, this shit ain't detectable by noone. Human, or otherwise.My boys, they tested it on some ho's that was down at da club. Bitches never knew what hit em. At least one of 'em was an "it", like the ho you lookin to score with.Now, howz about my money? I charge one hundred a dose. Believe me, this stuff is worth at least twice that."

His client smiled. "Good. We got a deal, then?"

"Yeah, dawg. You put the money in my hand, this stuff's yours."

He took it from the bum's extended hand, and held it up to what little light was avaiable in the alley, looked at it up close for the first time. It was opaque, white, like salt. The few grains that the freezer bag held, were enough, he was told as he was handed them, was more than adequate to get what he wanted. He grinned. Yep, tonight, the bitch would pay.

The kid spoke to him.

"Where's my money?"

Suddenly the guy he requested payment from drew him into a tight embrace, as though he were greeting an old friend, though immediately afterwards, he felt a sharp, warm stick in thepit of his stomach that burned as though he'd been run through with a ignited blowtorch turned up to full flame. He immediately realized he'd been stabbed. A look of utter amazement on his face, he stared at the man who stabbed him, his mouth a perfect "O" of shock. Then, he fell to the ground, a loud thud in his corpse's wake. A crisp new one hundred dollar bill fluttered like manna from heaven into the blood gushing from the wound in his stomach, sticking to his gaping wound like a sort of sick theraputic gauze.

His murderer grinned manaically, as he stared down, sickeningly admiring at his grisly handiwork.

"Payment in full"

He walked out of the alley nonchalantly, the rubber heels of his immaculately shined patent leather shoes scuffing the ground as he walked.

Chapter 3

She'd been walking for at least an hour, no where in particular, just roaming the streets, trying to get the redhead and their fight out of her head. God, why'd she have to ask Barabara that question, knowing deep down she probably wasn't going to like the answer. Getting the answer to a question from Barbara Gordon was like getting a homemade sweater from your grandmother at Christmas, you didn't know what it was going to look like, but somehow you just knew that you weren't gonna like it.

Somehow, she ended up at the door of her apartment above the Dark Horse. The lighting of the stairs was particularly bad, as the city had hit a power surge not too long ago, and the city had, as yet, neglected the seedier parts of the city in its power restoration. She cursed as she fumbled for her keys in darkness that was almost impossible to penetrate even with her inhanced vision. She was so concentrated on the task at hand that she nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard a voice right beside her.

"Here,Lemme help you"

As she touched her chest, trying to get her heart to slow below past near heart attack speed,and slowly took her breath in gulps, she recognized the voice, and spoke into the darkness to its owner.

"Reese, what are you doing here?"

He grinned, and shined the light of a small, metalic police flashlight on his face, both showing her his face, and giving it an errie, almost evil reflection of his normally handsome face. He took a small key from his pocket,shined the light that had been on his face onto the old, metalic keyhole of her white door, and within a few seconds, a "snick" was heard, and she was in her apartment, and she motioned him inside the apartment that was, at the moment, illuminated only by Coleman camping lanterns strategically placed around the apartment. She spoke to him, turning to face him as she walked backwards towards the kitchen. She pointed towards a small, black leather couch.

"Make yourself at home. I assume you're not on duty, so can I offer you a drink? I don't have lights, but I damn sure got all the alcoholic beverages you could ask for. It's one of the perks of working for a bar. I get what they can't sell."

He smiled, and leaned up from the couch to watch her as she fished through her dead refrigerator.

"Just a beer, please."

"Okay"

He rose from the couch to be of assistance. She had finished pouring her drink, a vodka straight, and was getting his out of the refrigerator. He grinned slightly in her direction, to her back, took a small baggie out of his pocket, and shook some white grains into her drink, and shook it slightly, and the grains disappeared. He placed back on the counter just as she stood upright, handing him his beer. Domestic, he noted off-handedly.

As he popped his beer open, she looked at him as she raised her drink.

"To good times"

"Oh, you have no idea, bitch, you have no idea", he thought as he grinned smugly and raised his beer to return the toast, and took a healthy swig, as she finished her shot in one long gulp. She poured herself another shot, and raised it to him again, saying nothing, and gulped it as fast as the other. They stood, talking, for about ten minutes, then, suddenly, she grabbed her head, moaning, suddenly feeling numb and nauseous. He questioned her.

"Helena, what's wrong?"

She stumbled past him, evidently not seeing him, to her couch, and collapsed.

He moved over to the edge of the couch, and, as he came over to her, she thought for a moment, however brief, that he was going to help her, to call a doctor. Instead, still holding her gaze, a small, manical smile , crept up his lips slowly, with all the grace and ease of a python slowly, delibrately pursuing its fleeing prey up into a tree. Suddenly, as she realized she couldn't move, that her muscles had frozen into place, and she was paralyzed, her body feeling a heaviness like she'd felt only right before she fell into a deep sleep, only this time her body felt as though a million minute spiders were crawling up and down her skin, the way she'd felt when a limb "fell asleep" from blood circulation deprivation. She couldn't move, and it scared her more than she'd ever thought possible, more than perhaps even in that moment when she'd been 17, and clutching her mother's limp, lifeless form so tight to her breast as though if the dead woman's corpse were denied her, she'd cease to exist as well on that rain drenched, God forsaken night,sobbing her heart out,in the middle of the sidewalk, surrounded by hundreds of people, yet totally and utterly alone, friendless, for the first time in her young life. He moved atop her, looked into her eyes, and spoke as he reached with his right forefinger and gently stroked her right cheek with a touch so soft that she could barely register it above a tickle. Still smiling, eyes unwavering from hers, he stroked her cheek, his voice an aroused whisper in the air, a whisper so light only her hearing could detect it.

"So soft, so beautiful."

She closed her eyes, at the touch, willing herself mentally away from where her body was. As soon as she did, she heard him scream in rage,a guttaral scream, filled with animalistic lust and rage. Suddenly, she she felt his closed fist connect with her jaw, and she felt each of the fifty diamonds encrusted in his golden family crest ring bore into her cheek individually like termites on fire as it made contact. He forcibly picked up her head, and with her injured jaw between his digits, her mouth looked all the world like the fish lips children make at each other. Her eyes still squeezed closed, unwilling to look at her assaliant, he spoke to her in a low growl, forcibly, painfully, wretching her eyelids wide open, so she was forced to look in his direction.

"Nu uh. You look at me when I'm talking to you, you cock-teasing little bitch. You strut around in front of me, night after night, in your tight ass little leather outfits, showing off your body, and you don't expect me to start wanting you? Do you know how long I've wanted you, Helena? From the first night I saw you, I knew you were the only one for me. And then" He snorted as he laughed sardonically, looking away moentarily as though he were gathering his thoughts, smile never leaving his face as he did."And then, come to find out, after all this time, you've been fucking a crippled bitch that teaches up at the high school. You would rather fuck another bitch than have real dick? You lead me on this entire time, making me think I've got a shot with you, never saying you had anyone else, and then you come to me a few nights ago and tell me you're a lesbian, and you've got a girlfriend, and I'm supposed to accept it and just move on? Well" He stood a moment, and removed his kacki dress pants and his patent leather shoes, and his white cotton socks with a practiced ease. He mounted her again, naked, and, grabbing her leather pants on either side with a hand on each side, ripped them off her, leaving her naked from the waist down. He thrust his erect penis into her painfully dry vagina. "Well, I'll show you what little cock teasers get when they fuck with me."

She began willing herself away mentally again,and she was glad she had as his fists began raining down upon her entire body in indiscriminate places,with his full strength behind them. Then, she heard it. The voice in her ear of the woman who was, as ever, trying to be her savior, telling her to hold on, that Dinah was on her way, telling her that she loved her. The voice of the woman who'd saved her when she'd wanted to kill Clayface to avenge her mother's death, keeping her from falling into an abyss even she wouldn't have been able to pull herself out of. The voice of the woman who'd dried the tears from a frightened child's nightmares when they both clung to each other for dear life, for their sanity, after personal tragedies had incapacitated both of them. The voice of the woman who had cried with her then was trying not to sob now. With her last vestiage of consiousness, she declared her love for that woman one last time, tears burning firey canyons into her cheeks, as she wept, not from the violence of what was happening to her, but from the gentleness of the touch she felt certain she'd never experience again.

"I love you, too, Barbara, and I'm so sorry."

With that, she heard her attacker give his moan of climax, and then all ceased to be.

Chapter 4

The acrid, metallic, coopery stench of blood hit Dinah Lance's lungs like a putrid freight train as she entered the apartment, making her so physically sick that she gagged and retched as though she had just had just stepped in her own vomit, and had lifted her feet to see it. As she saw the unconsious,bloody and bruised form of her best friend lying prone on the couch, she knew why. Shaking visibly, she approached Helena, hoping and praying that she wouldn't find her already dead, praying to any god that cared to listen that she hadn't gotten to her too late, and as she felt for a pulse on the brunette's neck, and seeing if she was breathing, she was denied a validation of her fervent prayer. She spoke into the comm, her voice, along with her sanity, crumbling further into non-existance with the utterence of every word.

"Oracle, I.. I f..f...ound her. It's, it's not g..good."

Barbara responded, trying to keep her composure to help Dinah figure out what to do next, and failing miserably.

"Ok, Dinah..." Oh, dear god, she can't be dead, she just can't be. She's the most alive person I've ever known, she can't die, not now, not like this, Barbara thought. All she wanted to do right now was gather Helena's limp form into the safety of her arms and sob. Sighing, more to gain her composure than anything else, she spoke.

"Dinah, do you know how to perform CPR?"

"Yes."

"Make sure she's not choking on anything."

Supporting the brunette's neck to safe guard against neck injuries, Dinah gently opened Helena's mouth, and looked inside, and was immediately hesitant about looking inside again. There was blood, so much blood. She'd never seen so much blood come from any one person. She turned the unconsious woman on her side, and nearly became sick all over again as the sticky, vermillion and black liquid flowed from the brunette's mouth like some sort of grotesque fountain.

Moments later, satisfied that there was no longer blood blocking her path to Helena's airway, Dinah pinched Helena's nostrils closed, and breathed into her mouth, twice, as she was supposed to, and was rewarded by seeing the brunette's chest rise and fall twice. She began compressions, and as she was counting them out, she was carried to a place she didn't recognize.

As she looked around, she noticed she was in Helena's apartment, but it was different. She knew Helena's apartment to be sparse of any real furniture, as she stayed with Barbabra at the Clock Tower so much that she really had a seperate residence in theory only, but this place had no furniture whatsoever. She realized she was inside Helena's mind, a feeling that was affirmed by what she saw a moment later.

In the far corner of the room, clothed only in a light blue blanket, was a figure hardly recognizable as Helena Kyle. Dinah felt pain beyond the obvious physical radiating off her friend in waves so strong that it almost demanded she leave. She wanted to say something, anything, to assuage the torment her best friend was experiencing. Words failing her, she went forward, and grabbed Helena's right arm and tugged on it, trying her best to get her to pay attention. Frustrated, she spoke.

"Are you going to just give up?"

Helena's beet-red, tear-stained visage rose achingly slow to meet her gaze. Her voice racked with unbearable pain, she spoke.

"Why shouldn't I? Everything I clung to as being a constant in my life is gone. Barbara doesn't want me anymore, Reese, God, Dinah, Reese, he..."

Dinah slumped down in the corner as her best friend, the most self-confident woman she'd ever known, was reduced to the sobbing mess she now cradled in her arms. Letting Helena set the pace of the conversation, content to merely hold the hysterical brunette and stroke her cropped ebony locks until she saw fit to speak again,kissed the top of Helena's forehead as she held her tight against her body, her neck absorbing the tears that flowed in torents down Helena's face from her usually unbelievably clear, sky blue eyes. As Helena pulled the blue blanket around both of their shoulders, leaving only their heads visable, she spoke through hiccups.

"Dinah, Reese.. he.. he.."

"He what, Helena? Reese did what?"

"He raped me, Dinah. Reese, HE FUCKING RAPED ME, Di..."

Helena's words went back into sobs, and Dinah held her friend tight again. She spoke in a soft voice that only Helena's hearing would detect.

"Hel, i don't know what to say, except I'm so sorry. I know that doesn't begin to make it stop hurting, but that's all I know how to say, all I know to do. One thing I DO know, the Helena Kyle I know is so many things, but a quitter isn't one of them. You die right now, and that's exactly what you'll be doing, Helena. You die, and Reese will have won. You didn't quit when Clayface killed your mom, you didn't let me quit when Al Hawke killed mine, and I sure as hell aren't going to let you start now. I need you, Helena, whether you realize it or not. Barbara needs you. She loves you, Helena, and it's killing her to think that you might die. I can't lose her, and I can't, I won't, lose you. You've got to come back, Helena, if you have any pretense of meaning the words "I love you" to Barbara Gordon everytime you say them to her, you'll come back with me."

Chapter 6

Dinah felt an almost painful disconnection from her friend's mind as she was pushed aside, breaking the psychic connection she had with Helena, leaving her breath in heaves and leaving her frustratingly answerless as to whether or not her best friend wanted to live.

Dinah looked at the man who had taken her away from her friend, and was leading her, quite involuntarily, out of the room. His shoulder length, bleach blonde hair was tied back in an immaculate ponytail. He was tall, about 6'6", and probably weighed 300 pounds, though from the looks of his build, he was a body builder, as his muscles strained against his white and blue paramedics uniform. His most startling feature, however, were his eyes. They were ice blue, like Helena's, but that wasn't what Dinah really saw, she saw the kindess and empathy behind them. Prior to seeing him, Dinah thought the only person's smile who could reach their eyes was Helena. As she struggled against him, he spoke, his gentle, soothing, almost hypnotic voice sounding like a mixture of smoke and fine bourbon.

"Miss, you're going to have to stand back and let my partner work on your friend."

Seeing Dinah's distress plainly etched into her face, he decided to change the subject to try and get her mind elsewhere.

"What's your name?"

"Dinah, Dinah Lance."

"Dinah, my name's Sean Sims. You're gonna need to calm down, sweetie. I know that's easier said than done, but I need you to focus for me. What's your friend's name?"

Her voice breaking with barely contained agony over not being able to see her friend anymore, having been taken out of the room by the man she was now talking to in the hallway, she spoke.

"Helena Kyle."

He nodded, making a note of it on the piece of paper on his metal clipboard.

"How old is Helena?"

"24"

"Okay, sweetie, is she allergic to anything, any medical conditions that you know of, anything that we need to know about to treat her?"

"Not that I know of. I've only known her for a year, though. She lives with Barbara Gordon, her girlfriend, she'd know for sure. I'm so sorry I don't know any more than I do."

"It's okay, sweetie, you're doing wonderful. You're a huge help. Tell me, do you know what happened tonight?"

Finally losing all vestage of control, Dinah began sobbing uncontrollably, and mumbled through her tears as she turned her face from him in the extremely narrow, rickety wooden hallway.

"She was raped."

Sean, disgusted, though not suprised, having seen Helena's condition on the couch where she was found, spoke in a controlled tone.

"Ok, sweetie, I'm gonna have to contact the police, though it'll be Helena's choice whether or not to press charges. I am so very sorry about what has happened to your friend."

Dinah nodded absent mindedly, totally numb.

As he patted her on the shoulder, she spoke.

"Helena, she's gonna be ok, isn't she? I mean, she just has to be."

He shook his head slowly, sad he couldn't answer her question definitavely.

" I don't know, sweetie. All i can tell you is, she's in good hands, the hospital we're taking her to, Wayne Mercy, is one of the best in the world. You might wanna tell her girlfriend where we're taking her."

She already knows, hell, she's probably already there, Dinah thought.

Sean poked his head into the room, only to see his partner with Helena on the gurney, coming out the front door. He spoke to his partner, a portly,bald man whose ravens wing colored hair, where it did exist, was laid like a Olympic laurel around his shiny scalp, except for what Helena would've called a "dying gasp of a bad combover, please take your hair off life support, the fucker's dead. My God, let it go!" She snickered at the thought.

The man driving the gurney spoke to Sean.

"We got her stable, though it's shaky, let's get her to the hospital, stat."

Chapter 7

6 hours later

As Barbara sat next to the bed of the woman that was her life, the machines that were keeping her alive beeping out the rate of her heart, the resperator that protruded from her nose, kept in place by thickly applied tape, her eyes, which had been open when Dinah had found her, now taped shut with clear tape to prevent them from drying out, Barbara thought to herself that it seemed there wasn't a spot on her lover's body that wasn't attached to a machine of some sort. She thought of how, if the brunette were consious, she'd be bitching about hospital gown she was wearing, and the sadistic doctors who made people wear the "assless ensambles" as Helena called them.

"When did it happen?"

Barbara jumped out of her skin as she turned to face the familiar male voice that had broken her from her thoughts. The man whose gaze she met was incredibly familiar, but he had changed so much since they'd met last. Whereas he used to have short, cropped hair, he had let his platnum locks grow slightly below his shoulders. She'd known about his passion for motorcycles, and evidently, he'd finally broken down and gotten one, because he held a jet black motorcycle helmet loosely in his right, biker gloved hand. His black stone washed blue jeans hugged his hips, and a steel wallet chain hooked to the black genuine leather wallet in his pocket was attached to the second loop on the right of his jeans. His immaculately polished black skin snake boots clinked loudly as he walked towards her, due to the matching metal chains fastened around his boots. Finishing off his ensemble was a brand new black leather bomber jacket that hung loosely over his left shoulder, held in place by the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. As he stepped into the light, she noticed he'd gotten his left ear pierced, as evidenced by the gold loop that hung close to his lobes. His eyes the color of new honey, smiled sadly at her. She spoke.

"About 9:30 last night. Dinah found her. God, Dick. Helena can't die, she just can't... Not after everything we said to each other, not before I get a chance to tell her how sorry I am for what I said. I said such horrible things to her, Dick. I don't know what came over me. One minute we're celebrating her birthday, happy and joking around, not a care in the world, and the next, we're biting each other's heads off. And then I tell her I never wanna see her again. Well, I guess I got my wish, huh?"

Richard "Dick" Grayson walked to her, knelt to her level, and looked into her jade orbs, usually unbelievably clear, now so red they looked as though she had been in a smoke filled bar.came again, as they had been all night. Amid the beeping of monitors, and the loud "ssshhh" of the air compressor of the respirator, he spoke in a soft, soothing voice to the woman he'd loved a long time ago, and if he dared to admit it, she still owned his heart. He sat his jacket on the floor beside him, curled his now empty hand into loose fist, and crooked his index finger under her chin, so that their gaze was truly even, as she had lowered her head and begun to cry as he was laying his jacket down.

"Babara, this isn't your fault." She shook her head violently side to side, denying his amnesty of her actions. " Yes, it is, Dick. You weren't there, you don't know the God awful things I said to her" He gently brushed a strand of fire red hair that had strayed onto her face and was resting in front of her right eye, and pushed it gently behind her right ear, grinning slightly as he did.

"Barbara. Babs, listen to me. You didn't do this, okay? This is NOT your fault. People fight, they say things when they're mad that they don't mean."

"Dick,Helena was raped last night. If we hadn't fought, she would've been in the ClockTower, and she would've been safe. How can that not be my fault?"

Dick was blown away, he had had no clue his adopted sister had been violated in that way.Suddenly, the room heated up unbelivibly for Richard Grayson, and he sucked in air rapidly as the room suddenly felt devoid of any air.

"Babs,wow. I didn't know that. Do they know who did it?"

She nodded, hating to admit that a man the entire team had trusted so much had betrayed them, had betrayed Helena, so cruelly.

"He's a cop, Dick. A detective. Jesse Reese."

Richard, breathing heavily, nostrils flaring like a raging bull, spoke to her.

"Don't worry, Babs. The bastard'll pay" He looked at his adopted sister's prone form lying in the hospital bed."Mark my words, one way or another, I'll make sure Helena gets justice. You don't hurt Dick Grayson's little sister and get away with it."

Barbara looked at Helena, then met his gaze.

"Dick, what are you going to do?"  
  
"I'm going huntin'"

Chapter 7

She'd been watching the whole thing, though for the life of her, she couldn't figure out why Babs and Dick were calling that, that "thing" in the hospital bed her. She was still alive. She had to be, she still had so much to do. As she stood there, and watched the two leave the room, she heard a voice she'd been aching to hear again for the past eight years behind her. It was a voice that had been taken from her, she'd thought forever, in one horrific, violent gut wrenching moment when she was seveteen. The voice she'd heard only in the shadows of her dreams was now so real, she wanted to believe it was really the owner of the voice that was speaking to her, and not the shadowy phantom of the night that always disappeared in the morning light. The woman stroked her face, drying her tears with a feather soft touch of her thumbs.

"My God, you've grown so much. You're so beautiful. My baby girl's not a baby anymore."

She answered the voice aprehensively as she turned, somehow childishly afraid that if she turned too quickly, she'd scare it away. Her voice broke, croaking out a reply.

"Mom? Mom, is that you? Is it really you?"

The woman who met her gaze as she turned was just as she remembered her. The lithe, stunningly beautiful, doe eyed blonde smiled at her daughter, crying herelf as the girl she'd lost in an instant eight years before ran into her arms, bear hugging her. The suit Selina wore was exactly the one that she was killed. Powder blue, form hugging, accentuating every curve she had. The midnight black outline of the lapels was as stunning as the night she'd worn it last in life. Tan pantyhose still looking amazing on her muscled legs, along with her matching blue shoes, and her shiny, fresh washed blonde hair cascading down her back, still smelling of the strawberry shampoo she'd used that night. Selina nodded slowly as she took in the sight of her only child, her baby. Her precious,precious baby. God,how she'd missed her. And yet, she knew she'd come with a purpose.

"Helena, baby, I'm here for a reason. You've got a choice to make. You need to decide if you're going to stay here, or if you're going to come with me."

A look of utter terror slowly inched across her face as the reality of the situation hit her like a brakeless mack truck speeding helplessly through a stop light carrying a ton of bricks. As she turned towawrd the limp form hooked to all those machines, the beeps and shh of all that life support connected to it became louder and louder, til it sounded as loud as a jet engine taking off, then, suddenly, everything was silent, erriely silent. She reached out and tried to touch the face of the bruied and battered form she found there. Her hand went right through. Upon two or three tries of this, she she slowly returned her attention to her mother, who was smiling sadly at her daughter.

"If you're here, and I can see you, and talk to you, and touch you" she touched her mother, feeling the solidity of her mother's business jacket under her smooth skin, " then that means..."

Selina shook her head slowly.

"Not yet, sweetie. You've got a choice to make, and I'm here to help you do that. You're lucky, you have a choice, I didn't."

"Mom, that's a no-brainer. Of course I wanna stay with you. I've always wanted to stay with you."

Selina turned as the sound of a motor whirring came towards the door of the room, drawing her daughter's attention with it, speaking as a despondant Barbara looked at Helena's body in the bed, and began sobbin again. Selina spoke in answer to her daugher's reply.

"And leave HER behind?"


	3. chapter 7

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Prologue

Barbara Gordon sighed as she leaned over the hospital bed, the long, angular floresent bulb that was bolted into the wall directly above it flickered just enough to be perceptable to someone like the woman who lay in the bed, unconsious, in a deep coma, her features bathed in the white light, complimenting her blood soaked, cropped, midnight black hair, so much so that she looked like a sleeping cherub, lying there, resperator tube that was sticking out of her nose like some violating serpent, making sure her lungs recieved the air neccessary for life, her chest rising and falling so naturally that it appeared that she was merely asleep, and that if Barbara could just shake her hard enough, she'd wake,flutter those ice blue orbs that had stolen Barbara's heart from the moment they met, laugh, and start the tickling game with Barbara she was so infinately fond of playing, a game that usually ended with them making love, and then falling asleep in each other's arms. It wouldn't happen that way tonight, though. As new tears replaced the brothers that had flowed down her cheeks all night long, keeping the trail open for the brothers that would fall down her cheeks, Barbara prayed to any God that cared to listen that it would happen again at all.

What was so assinine about the whole situation, she thought, was the sequence of events that had led them to this place. As the sickeningly yellow tile on the hospital wall, tile offset only by the occassional white grout to both seperate the tiles, and hold them together, seemed to close in on her, and sickening mixture of Lysol, sickness and impending death gave her a distinct feeling of having the bile from her liver and settle into and burn her throat, making her extremely sick to her stomach, her mind was flooded with memories.

Chapter 1

"C'mon, Hel, blow out the candles, we're fucking starving in here." Helena Kyle laughed heartily, loving the fact that she could infuriate the redhead so. It was her twenty-fourth birthday, and, as always, Barbara had gone way over board in celebrating it. She had already had Alfred cook way too much food, and both women were so drunk they were barely coherent. Even so, Barbara was currently nursing her sixth coke and rum, Helena working on her tenth screwdriver. Even Dinah had a little buzz going, having been snuck some vodka "under the table" by her adopted big sister. Moments earlier, a sloppy chorus of " Happy Birthday" had rang through the clocktower curtusey of the attendants of the Bachanalian, a song that normally took about two minutes to sing while sober, had taken about ten minutes, as the celebrants stumbled to remember the words, several times drifting off into mumbles as the inebriated ones tried to restart the song and sing it correctly. The funny part of it for Helena was, that Barbara singing the song sounded much like an inebriated Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" to JFK on television.

As she blew out the candles, everyone clapped. Alfred handed her the cake cutter, and let her make the first cut in the rich, dark chocolate cake. Alfred took his leave, despite Helena's insistance that he stay and enjoy the party. Dishes wouldn't wait, he'd said. Dinah yawned, and said she was going to bed, flipping the "off" switch on her comm as both women bid her good night.

As soon as the sound of Dinah's bedroom shutting resonded through the clocktower, a quiet settled over the living room.

Helena broke the silence, grinning as she leaned forward, making the leather apolstered couch protest with a slight squeaking sound as she did, her hands folded in her lap..

"Babs, truth or dare?"

Barabara couldn't believe Helena still loved playing this game, but, upon rolling her eyes and smiling, her jaw reclining lazily on her right fist, the arm of which was resting on the wheelchair armrest, decided to play along.

"Truth."

"You know you were my first. Who was yours?"

Barbara's breath caught as she grinned.

"Honestly? You really wanna know?"

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't."

Barbara smiled as she remembered her first sexual experience.

"Carolyn Lance."

She was grinning until she saw the look on Helena's face. A look of sheer, unadulterated, barely contained rage had overtaken her upon hearing that the woman who had so insulted her mother's memory had been her lover's first. She silently stood, put the white bone china's plate whose deep , intrigate patterning she had been sketching with her nails, on the couch, and turned to leave, wanting to wait til she'd cooled off to say anything to the redhead. Barbara wasn't going to give her the option of that easy of an out, however. Helena was just like her father in that respect, though she'd never admit it. She could handle the stress of an ass-kicking well enough, could more than handle herself in fights where she was outnumbered ten to one, had had her ass kicked sixteen ways to Sunday on numerous occassions, and gotten up, brushed herself off, and went back for more. But when it came to telling the people she cared most for that something had upset her, an action that would require an expression of anger by means other than kicking the holy hell out of someone, Helena Kyle was about as effective in handling things as a chiuaua puppy trying to stop a burglar.

As Barbara grabbed the elbow of her new, shin-length leather duster to stop her, she jerked out of the other woman's grasp roughly, knowing exactly how hard she could pull without bringing Barbara tumbling out of her wheelchair. The wheelchair-bound woman called to Helena as she left the inner confines of the clocktower, and, hearing the sound of the concrete on the ledge making contact with her raised heel sandals, she stopped as she heard Barbara stop her wheelchair behind her.

"Helena, where do you think you're going?"

Not turning to acknowledge the other woman, Helena spoke, her angry, raspy voice barely registering above audible, and if she hadn't been so attuned to Helena's voice, Barbara wouldn't have been able to tell she'd been answered.

"Out."

"Where? I need to know where you're going so in case anything happens, I can...."

Helena turned to face her, the same look of rage, though deeper, chisled into her features, wind whipping her jet black locks around her face, the bright moonlight framing it, forming a errie halo around it, the tail of her leather duster flying wildly in the hard breeze. .

" So you can what, Barbara? Send the kid to look for me? Jesus Christ, Barbara, I'm twenty four fucking years old, and you still treat me like I'm four! I'll be fine, alright? And even if something happens, you obviously did alright in the "someone to screw" department long before I came along, and I'm sure you won't lack in that department once I'm gone. I mean, you fucked the mother, why not just pick up where you left off by fucking the daughter? Hell, how do I know you're not breaking the kid in behind my back as we speak?"

Not thinking, Barbara did something she'd never done before. She slapped Helena as hard as she could across the face, her finely manicured nails leaving four long, even, bloody scratches across the brunette's right cheek.Helena reached her right hand up to her cheek, knowing that Barbara had drawn blood, but for some reason, the blood that she found on her fingers seemed alien to her, and she stared at it with almost childlike wonder, as though she were seeing it for the first time, as she thinned it with her fingers, watching with mystified amazement as it made straight,watery, vermillion trails down to the palm of her hand. Her face stung as though she'd bobbed head first into a nest of pissed off yellow jackets, and held it there while they stung her over and over again mercilessly.

Tears filling her eyes, and her voice, and her whole body for that matter, shaking with indignation, Barbara spoke.

"Fuck you, Helena Kyle. How could you say something like that? Yes, I did sleep with Carolyn, alright? But that was a long time ago, long before I ever knew you, long before there was ever anything close to an "us". I can't believe you'd even insinuate that I'd want Dinah. She is a child, I am her guardian, nothing more, nothing less. I am many things, Helena, but a pervert isn't among them. I may have fucked Black Canary, and you may be pissed over it, but I at least I can remember the names of all the people I've screwed, and can count them and still have fingers and toes left."

Helena snorted.

"Was she as good as me when she had you, Barbara? Did Carolyn Lance make you have to buy new sheets everytime she got a piece of ass from you like I do? Well, I'll guess we'll never know, will we? 'Cause Carolyn's pushing up daisies, and I guess I got the sloppy seconds. Guess the kid I'll have my leftovers."

A death grip on her wheelchair arm rests, Barbara spoke through gritted teeth.

"That was different. The circumstances were completely different to what they are now."

Helena laughed sardonically.

"What, I'm a nympho, and she's not? Guess who I got all my desire from, Babs? I had a damn good teacher. The kid won't be lacking,either. Not with you for an instructor."

Barabara sighed, dejected.

"Fine, Helena. Leave, and I dont care what happens to you, or if I ever see you again! I hope you get exactly what's coming to you. I hope you rot in hell."

As Helena spread her arms, and jumped from the eighty story ledge, Barbara turned her chair, and, upon reaching the inner sanctum of the clocktower, upon reaching Delphi, she let loose the sobs she'd been too proud to let her lover see, she mentally took back everything she'd just said in anger, and prayed for Helena's safety.

Chapter 2

"And you're sure this stuff is undetectable? I mean, you can't smell it, or taste it when it's mixed in with drinks?" He was nervous about this transaction. He sure as hell didn't want it traced back to himself. The consequences if it was were unfathomable. He didn't even want to comprehend them, and chose not to. As he eyed the street punk selling him the drugs, his nose burned with the unfamiliar smell of filth, urine, fecal matter, and the smell of recent visits of cheap prostitutes with their seedy clients in clandestine meetings in the dark alley he and the low-life bum that was selling him this stuff were in.

The guy selling him the drug was dressed in a filthy overcoat, a vermillion red T-Shirt with the sleeves jaggedly cut off, which showed off milk white, tooth pick thin arms with no muscle tone. His unkempt, shoulder length greasy hair that reeked of not having been washed in several days, hung close to his neck. His left ear was blood red, swollen to twice the size of the other, looking as though if one poked it hard enough, it would explode with green pus. This was due to an unsterile metal loop earring that clung uncomfortably close to his lobe. His unseemly ensemble was completed by ratty, torn, rockwashed blue jeans, and even older tennis shoes. The punk, who couldn't have been over 19, spoke.

"I'm tellin you, man, this shit ain't detectable by noone. Human, or otherwise.My boys, they tested it on some ho's that was down at da club. Bitches never knew what hit em. At least one of 'em was an "it", like the ho you lookin to score with.Now, howz about my money? I charge one hundred a dose. Believe me, this stuff is worth at least twice that."

His client smiled. "Good. We got a deal, then?"

"Yeah, dawg. You put the money in my hand, this stuff's yours."

He took it from the bum's extended hand, and held it up to what little light was avaiable in the alley, looked at it up close for the first time. It was opaque, white, like salt. The few grains that the freezer bag held, were enough, he was told as he was handed them, was more than adequate to get what he wanted. He grinned. Yep, tonight, the bitch would pay.

The kid spoke to him.

"Where's my money?"

Suddenly the guy he requested payment from drew him into a tight embrace, as though he were greeting an old friend, though immediately afterwards, he felt a sharp, warm stick in thepit of his stomach that burned as though he'd been run through with a ignited blowtorch turned up to full flame. He immediately realized he'd been stabbed. A look of utter amazement on his face, he stared at the man who stabbed him, his mouth a perfect "O" of shock. Then, he fell to the ground, a loud thud in his corpse's wake. A crisp new one hundred dollar bill fluttered like manna from heaven into the blood gushing from the wound in his stomach, sticking to his gaping wound like a sort of sick theraputic gauze.

His murderer grinned manaically, as he stared down, sickeningly admiring at his grisly handiwork.

"Payment in full"

He walked out of the alley nonchalantly, the rubber heels of his immaculately shined patent leather shoes scuffing the ground as he walked.

Chapter 3

She'd been walking for at least an hour, no where in particular, just roaming the streets, trying to get the redhead and their fight out of her head. God, why'd she have to ask Barabara that question, knowing deep down she probably wasn't going to like the answer. Getting the answer to a question from Barbara Gordon was like getting a homemade sweater from your grandmother at Christmas, you didn't know what it was going to look like, but somehow you just knew that you weren't gonna like it.

Somehow, she ended up at the door of her apartment above the Dark Horse. The lighting of the stairs was particularly bad, as the city had hit a power surge not too long ago, and the city had, as yet, neglected the seedier parts of the city in its power restoration. She cursed as she fumbled for her keys in darkness that was almost impossible to penetrate even with her inhanced vision. She was so concentrated on the task at hand that she nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard a voice right beside her.

"Here,Lemme help you"

As she touched her chest, trying to get her heart to slow below past near heart attack speed,and slowly took her breath in gulps, she recognized the voice, and spoke into the darkness to its owner.

"Reese, what are you doing here?"

He grinned, and shined the light of a small, metalic police flashlight on his face, both showing her his face, and giving it an errie, almost evil reflection of his normally handsome face. He took a small key from his pocket,shined the light that had been on his face onto the old, metalic keyhole of her white door, and within a few seconds, a "snick" was heard, and she was in her apartment, and she motioned him inside the apartment that was, at the moment, illuminated only by Coleman camping lanterns strategically placed around the apartment. She spoke to him, turning to face him as she walked backwards towards the kitchen. She pointed towards a small, black leather couch.

"Make yourself at home. I assume you're not on duty, so can I offer you a drink? I don't have lights, but I damn sure got all the alcoholic beverages you could ask for. It's one of the perks of working for a bar. I get what they can't sell."

He smiled, and leaned up from the couch to watch her as she fished through her dead refrigerator.

"Just a beer, please."

"Okay"

He rose from the couch to be of assistance. She had finished pouring her drink, a vodka straight, and was getting his out of the refrigerator. He grinned slightly in her direction, to her back, took a small baggie out of his pocket, and shook some white grains into her drink, and shook it slightly, and the grains disappeared. He placed back on the counter just as she stood upright, handing him his beer. Domestic, he noted off-handedly.

As he popped his beer open, she looked at him as she raised her drink.

"To good times"

"Oh, you have no idea, bitch, you have no idea", he thought as he grinned smugly and raised his beer to return the toast, and took a healthy swig, as she finished her shot in one long gulp. She poured herself another shot, and raised it to him again, saying nothing, and gulped it as fast as the other. They stood, talking, for about ten minutes, then, suddenly, she grabbed her head, moaning, suddenly feeling numb and nauseous. He questioned her.

"Helena, what's wrong?"

She stumbled past him, evidently not seeing him, to her couch, and collapsed.

He moved over to the edge of the couch, and, as he came over to her, she thought for a moment, however brief, that he was going to help her, to call a doctor. Instead, still holding her gaze, a small, manical smile , crept up his lips slowly, with all the grace and ease of a python slowly, delibrately pursuing its fleeing prey up into a tree. Suddenly, as she realized she couldn't move, that her muscles had frozen into place, and she was paralyzed, her body feeling a heaviness like she'd felt only right before she fell into a deep sleep, only this time her body felt as though a million minute spiders were crawling up and down her skin, the way she'd felt when a limb "fell asleep" from blood circulation deprivation. She couldn't move, and it scared her more than she'd ever thought possible, more than perhaps even in that moment when she'd been 17, and clutching her mother's limp, lifeless form so tight to her breast as though if the dead woman's corpse were denied her, she'd cease to exist as well on that rain drenched, God forsaken night,sobbing her heart out,in the middle of the sidewalk, surrounded by hundreds of people, yet totally and utterly alone, friendless, for the first time in her young life. He moved atop her, looked into her eyes, and spoke as he reached with his right forefinger and gently stroked her right cheek with a touch so soft that she could barely register it above a tickle. Still smiling, eyes unwavering from hers, he stroked her cheek, his voice an aroused whisper in the air, a whisper so light only her hearing could detect it.

"So soft, so beautiful."

She closed her eyes, at the touch, willing herself mentally away from where her body was. As soon as she did, she heard him scream in rage,a guttaral scream, filled with animalistic lust and rage. Suddenly, she she felt his closed fist connect with her jaw, and she felt each of the fifty diamonds encrusted in his golden family crest ring bore into her cheek individually like termites on fire as it made contact. He forcibly picked up her head, and with her injured jaw between his digits, her mouth looked all the world like the fish lips children make at each other. Her eyes still squeezed closed, unwilling to look at her assaliant, he spoke to her in a low growl, forcibly, painfully, wretching her eyelids wide open, so she was forced to look in his direction.

"Nu uh. You look at me when I'm talking to you, you cock-teasing little bitch. You strut around in front of me, night after night, in your tight ass little leather outfits, showing off your body, and you don't expect me to start wanting you? Do you know how long I've wanted you, Helena? From the first night I saw you, I knew you were the only one for me. And then" He snorted as he laughed sardonically, looking away moentarily as though he were gathering his thoughts, smile never leaving his face as he did."And then, come to find out, after all this time, you've been fucking a crippled bitch that teaches up at the high school. You would rather fuck another bitch than have real dick? You lead me on this entire time, making me think I've got a shot with you, never saying you had anyone else, and then you come to me a few nights ago and tell me you're a lesbian, and you've got a girlfriend, and I'm supposed to accept it and just move on? Well" He stood a moment, and removed his kacki dress pants and his patent leather shoes, and his white cotton socks with a practiced ease. He mounted her again, naked, and, grabbing her leather pants on either side with a hand on each side, ripped them off her, leaving her naked from the waist down. He thrust his erect penis into her painfully dry vagina. "Well, I'll show you what little cock teasers get when they fuck with me."

She began willing herself away mentally again,and she was glad she had as his fists began raining down upon her entire body in indiscriminate places,with his full strength behind them. Then, she heard it. The voice in her ear of the woman who was, as ever, trying to be her savior, telling her to hold on, that Dinah was on her way, telling her that she loved her. The voice of the woman who'd saved her when she'd wanted to kill Clayface to avenge her mother's death, keeping her from falling into an abyss even she wouldn't have been able to pull herself out of. The voice of the woman who'd dried the tears from a frightened child's nightmares when they both clung to each other for dear life, for their sanity, after personal tragedies had incapacitated both of them. The voice of the woman who had cried with her then was trying not to sob now. With her last vestiage of consiousness, she declared her love for that woman one last time, tears burning firey canyons into her cheeks, as she wept, not from the violence of what was happening to her, but from the gentleness of the touch she felt certain she'd never experience again.

"I love you, too, Barbara, and I'm so sorry."

With that, she heard her attacker give his moan of climax, and then all ceased to be.

Chapter 4

The acrid, metallic, coopery stench of blood hit Dinah Lance's lungs like a putrid freight train as she entered the apartment, making her so physically sick that she gagged and retched as though she had just had just stepped in her own vomit, and had lifted her feet to see it. As she saw the unconsious,bloody and bruised form of her best friend lying prone on the couch, she knew why. Shaking visibly, she approached Helena, hoping and praying that she wouldn't find her already dead, praying to any god that cared to listen that she hadn't gotten to her too late, and as she felt for a pulse on the brunette's neck, and seeing if she was breathing, she was denied a validation of her fervent prayer. She spoke into the comm, her voice, along with her sanity, crumbling further into non-existance with the utterence of every word.

"Oracle, I.. I f..f...ound her. It's, it's not g..good."

Barbara responded, trying to keep her composure to help Dinah figure out what to do next, and failing miserably.

"Ok, Dinah..." Oh, dear god, she can't be dead, she just can't be. She's the most alive person I've ever known, she can't die, not now, not like this, Barbara thought. All she wanted to do right now was gather Helena's limp form into the safety of her arms and sob. Sighing, more to gain her composure than anything else, she spoke.

"Dinah, do you know how to perform CPR?"

"Yes."

"Make sure she's not choking on anything."

Supporting the brunette's neck to safe guard against neck injuries, Dinah gently opened Helena's mouth, and looked inside, and was immediately hesitant about looking inside again. There was blood, so much blood. She'd never seen so much blood come from any one person. She turned the unconsious woman on her side, and nearly became sick all over again as the sticky, vermillion and black liquid flowed from the brunette's mouth like some sort of grotesque fountain.

Moments later, satisfied that there was no longer blood blocking her path to Helena's airway, Dinah pinched Helena's nostrils closed, and breathed into her mouth, twice, as she was supposed to, and was rewarded by seeing the brunette's chest rise and fall twice. She began compressions, and as she was counting them out, she was carried to a place she didn't recognize.

As she looked around, she noticed she was in Helena's apartment, but it was different. She knew Helena's apartment to be sparse of any real furniture, as she stayed with Barbabra at the Clock Tower so much that she really had a seperate residence in theory only, but this place had no furniture whatsoever.The main thing that struck her, however, was that this place radiated bone chlling cold, the type of cold that, when it hits the skin, the icy breath of it causes stinging barbs of mind numbing pain to any exposed body part. She realized she was inside Helena's mind, a feeling that was affirmed by what she saw a moment later.

In the far corner of the room, clothed only in a light blue blanket, was a figure hardly recognizable as Helena Kyle. Dinah felt pain beyond the obvious physical radiating off her friend in waves so strong that it almost demanded she leave. She wanted to say something, anything, to assuage the torment her best friend was experiencing. Words failing her, she went forward, and grabbed Helena's right arm and tugged on it, trying her best to get her to pay attention. Frustrated, she spoke.

"Are you going to just give up?"

Helena's beet-red, tear-stained visage rose achingly slow to meet her gaze. Her voice racked with unbearable pain, she spoke.

"Why shouldn't I? Everything I clung to as being a constant in my life is gone. Barbara doesn't want me anymore, Reese, God, Dinah, Reese, he..."

Dinah slumped down in the corner as her best friend, the most self-confident woman she'd ever known, was reduced to the sobbing mess she now cradled in her arms. Letting Helena set the pace of the conversation, content to merely hold the hysterical brunette and stroke her cropped ebony locks until she saw fit to speak again,kissed the top of Helena's forehead as she held her tight against her body, her neck absorbing the tears that flowed in torents down Helena's face from her usually unbelievably clear, sky blue eyes. As Helena pulled the blue blanket around both of their shoulders, leaving only their heads visable, she spoke through hiccups.

"Dinah, Reese.. he.. he.."

"He what, Helena? Reese did what?"

"He raped me, Dinah. Reese, HE FUCKING RAPED ME, Di..."

Helena's words went back into sobs, and Dinah held her friend tight again. She spoke in a soft voice that only Helena's hearing would detect.

"Hel, i don't know what to say, except I'm so sorry. I know that doesn't begin to make it stop hurting, but that's all I know how to say, all I know to do. One thing I DO know, the Helena Kyle I know is so many things, but a quitter isn't one of them. You die right now, and that's exactly what you'll be doing, Helena. You die, and Reese will have won. You didn't quit when Clayface killed your mom, you didn't let me quit when Al Hawke killed mine, and I sure as hell aren't going to let you start now. I need you, Helena, whether you realize it or not. Barbara needs you. She loves you, Helena, and it's killing her to think that you might die. I can't lose her, and I can't, I won't, lose you. You've got to come back, Helena, if you have any pretense of meaning the words "I love you" to Barbara Gordon everytime you say them to her, you'll come back with me."

Chapter 6

Dinah felt an almost painful disconnection from her friend's mind as she was pushed aside, breaking the psychic connection she had with Helena, leaving her breath in heaves and leaving her frustratingly answerless as to whether or not her best friend wanted to live.

Dinah looked at the man who had taken her away from her friend, and was leading her, quite involuntarily, out of the room. His shoulder length, bleach blonde hair was tied back in an immaculate ponytail. He was tall, about 6'6", and probably weighed 300 pounds, though from the looks of his build, he was a body builder, as his muscles strained against his white and blue paramedics uniform. His most startling feature, however, were his eyes. They were ice blue, like Helena's, but that wasn't what Dinah really saw, she saw the kindess and empathy behind them. Prior to seeing him, Dinah thought the only person's smile who could reach their eyes was Helena. As she struggled against him, he spoke, his gentle, soothing, almost hypnotic voice sounding like a mixture of smoke and fine bourbon.

"Miss, you're going to have to stand back and let my partner work on your friend."

Seeing Dinah's distress plainly etched into her face, he decided to change the subject to try and get her mind elsewhere.

"What's your name?"

"Dinah, Dinah Lance."

"Dinah, my name's Sean Sims. You're gonna need to calm down, sweetie. I know that's easier said than done, but I need you to focus for me. What's your friend's name?"

Her voice breaking with barely contained agony over not being able to see her friend anymore, having been taken out of the room by the man she was now talking to in the hallway, she spoke.

"Helena Kyle."

He nodded, making a note of it on the piece of paper on his metal clipboard.

"How old is Helena?"

"24"

"Okay, sweetie, is she allergic to anything, any medical conditions that you know of, anything that we need to know about to treat her?"

"Not that I know of. I've only known her for a year, though. She lives with Barbara Gordon, her girlfriend, she'd know for sure. I'm so sorry I don't know any more than I do."

"It's okay, sweetie, you're doing wonderful. You're a huge help. Tell me, do you know what happened tonight?"

Finally losing all vestage of control, Dinah began sobbing uncontrollably, and mumbled through her tears as she turned her face from him in the extremely narrow, rickety wooden hallway.

"She was raped."

Sean, disgusted, though not suprised, having seen Helena's condition on the couch where she was found, spoke in a controlled tone.

"Ok, sweetie, I'm gonna have to contact the police, though it'll be Helena's choice whether or not to press charges. I am so very sorry about what has happened to your friend."

Dinah nodded absent mindedly, totally numb.

As he patted her on the shoulder, she spoke.

"Helena, she's gonna be ok, isn't she? I mean, she just has to be."

He shook his head slowly, sad he couldn't answer her question definitavely.

" I don't know, sweetie. All i can tell you is, she's in good hands, the hospital we're taking her to, Wayne Mercy, is one of the best in the world. You might wanna tell her girlfriend where we're taking her."

She already knows, hell, she's probably already there, Dinah thought.

Sean poked his head into the room, only to see his partner with Helena on the gurney, coming out the front door. He spoke to his partner, a portly,bald man whose ravens wing colored hair, where it did exist, was laid like a Olympic laurel around his shiny scalp, except for what Helena would've called a "dying gasp of a bad combover, please take your hair off life support, the fucker's dead. My God, let it go!" She snickered at the thought.

The man driving the gurney spoke to Sean.

"We got her stable, though it's shaky, let's get her to the hospital, stat."

Chapter 7

6 hours later

As Barbara sat next to the bed of the woman that was her life, the machines that were keeping her alive beeping out the rate of her heart, the resperator that protruded from her nose, kept in place by thickly applied tape, her eyes, which had been open when Dinah had found her, now taped shut with clear tape to prevent them from drying out, Barbara thought to herself that it seemed there wasn't a spot on her lover's body that wasn't attached to a machine of some sort. She thought of how, if the brunette were consious, she'd be bitching about hospital gown she was wearing, and the sadistic doctors who made people wear the "assless ensambles" as Helena called them.

"When did it happen?"

Barbara jumped out of her skin as she turned to face the familiar male voice that had broken her from her thoughts. The man whose gaze she met was incredibly familiar, but he had changed so much since they'd met last. Whereas he used to have short, cropped hair, he had let his platnum locks grow slightly below his shoulders. She'd known about his passion for motorcycles, and evidently, he'd finally broken down and gotten one, because he held a jet black motorcycle helmet loosely in his right, biker gloved hand. His black stone washed blue jeans hugged his hips, and a steel wallet chain hooked to the black genuine leather wallet in his pocket was attached to the second loop on the right of his jeans. His immaculately polished black skin snake boots clinked loudly as he walked towards her, due to the matching metal chains fastened around his boots. Finishing off his ensemble was a brand new black leather bomber jacket that hung loosely over his left shoulder, held in place by the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. As he stepped into the light, she noticed he'd gotten his left ear pierced, as evidenced by the gold loop that hung close to his lobes. His eyes the color of new honey, smiled sadly at her. She spoke.

"About 9:30 last night. Dinah found her. God, Dick. Helena can't die, she just can't... Not after everything we said to each other, not before I get a chance to tell her how sorry I am for what I said. I said such horrible things to her, Dick. I don't know what came over me. One minute we're celebrating her birthday, happy and joking around, not a care in the world, and the next, we're biting each other's heads off. And then I tell her I never wanna see her again. Well, I guess I got my wish, huh?"

Richard "Dick" Grayson walked to her, knelt to her level, and looked into her jade orbs, usually unbelievably clear, now so red they looked as though she had been in a smoke filled bar.came again, as they had been all night. Amid the beeping of monitors, and the loud "ssshhh" of the air compressor of the respirator, he spoke in a soft, soothing voice to the woman he'd loved a long time ago, and if he dared to admit it, still owned his heart. He sat his jacket on the floor beside him, curled his now empty hand into loose fist, and crooked his index finger under her chin, so that their gaze was truly even, as she had lowered her head and begun to cry as he was laying his jacket down.

"Babara, this isn't your fault." She shook her head violently side to side, denying his amnesty of her actions. " Yes, it is, Dick. You weren't there, you don't know the God awful things I said to her" He gently brushed a strand of fire red hair that had strayed onto her face and was resting in front of her right eye, and pushed it gently behind her right ear, grinning slightly as he did.

"Barbara. Babs, listen to me. You didn't do this, okay? This is NOT your fault. People fight, they say things when they're mad that they don't mean."

"Dick,Helena was raped last night. If we hadn't fought, she would've been in the ClockTower, and she would've been safe. How can that not be my fault?"

Dick was blown away, he had had no clue his adopted sister had been violated in that way.Suddenly, the room heated up unbelivibly for Richard Grayson, and he sucked in air rapidly as the room suddenly felt devoid of any air.

"Babs,wow. I didn't know that. Do they know who did it?"

She nodded, hating to admit that a man the entire team had trusted so much had betrayed them, had betrayed Helena, so cruelly.

"He's a cop, Dick. A detective. Jesse Reese."

Richard, breathing heavily, nostrils flaring like a raging bull, spoke to her. 

"Don't worry, Babs. The bastard'll pay" He looked at his adopted sister's prone form lying in the hospital bed."Mark my words, one way or another, I'll make sure Helena gets justice. You don't hurt Dick Grayson's little sister and get away with it."

Barbara looked at Helena, then met his gaze.

"Dick, what are you going to do?"  
  
"I'm going huntin'"

Chapter 7

She'd been watching the whole thing, though for the life of her, she couldn't figure out why Babs and Dick were calling that, that "thing" in the hospital bed her. She was still alive. She had to be, she still had so much to do. As she stood there, and watched the two leave the room, she heard a voice she'd been aching to hear again for the past eight years behind her. It was a voice that had been taken from her, she'd thought forever, in one horrific, violent gut wrenching moment when she was seveteen. The voice she'd heard only in the shadows of her dreams was now so real, she wanted to believe it was really the owner of the voice that was speaking to her, and not the shadowy phantom of the night that always disappeared in the morning light. The woman stroked her face, drying her tears with a feather soft touch of her thumbs.

"My God, you've grown so much. You're so beautiful. My baby girl's not a baby anymore."

She answered the voice aprehensively as she turned, somehow childishly afraid that if she turned too quickly, she'd scare it away. Her voice broke, croaking out a reply.

"Mom? Mom, is that you? Is it really you?"

The woman who met her gaze as she turned was just as she remembered her. The lithe, stunningly beautiful, doe eyed blonde smiled at her daughter, crying herelf as the girl she'd lost in an instant eight years before ran into her arms, bear hugging her. The suit Selina wore was exactly the one that she was killed. Powder blue, form hugging, accentuating every curve she had. The midnight black outline of the lapels was as stunning as the night she'd worn it last in life. Tan pantyhose still looking amazing on her muscled legs, along with her matching blue shoes, and her shiny, fresh washed blonde hair cascading down her back, still smelling of the strawberry shampoo she'd used that night. Selina nodded slowly as she took in the sight of her only child, her baby. Her precious,precious baby. God,how she'd missed her. And yet, she knew she'd come with a purpose.

"Helena, baby, I'm here for a reason. You've got a choice to make. You need to decide if you're going to stay here, or if you're going to come with me."

A look of utter terror slowly inched across her face as the reality of the situation hit her like a brakeless mack truck speeding helplessly through a stop light carrying a ton of bricks. As she turned towawrd the limp form hooked to all those machines, the beeps and shh of all that life support connected to it became louder and louder, til it sounded as loud as a jet engine taking off, then, suddenly, everything was silent, erriely silent. She reached out and tried to touch the face of the bruisd and battered form she found there. Her hand went right through. Upon two or three tries of this, she she slowly returned her attention to her mother, who was smiling sadly at her daughter.

"If you're here, and I can see you, and talk to you, and touch you" she touched her mother, feeling the solidity of her mother's business jacket under her smooth skin, " then that means..."

Selina shook her head slowly.

"Not yet, sweetie. You've got a choice to make, and I'm here to help you do that. You're lucky, you have a choice, I didn't."

"Mom, that's a no-brainer. Of course I wanna stay with you. I've always wanted to stay with you."

Selina turned as the sound of a motor whirring came towards the door of the room, drawing her daughter's attention with it, speaking as a despondant Barbara looked at Helena's body in the bed, and began sobbing. Selina spoke in answer to her daugher's reply.

"And leave HER behind?"

Chapter 8

As Barbara rolled away,Helena suddenly realized her mother's point. A decision wasn't as easy as it seemed on the surface. She'd leave so many that cared for her behind if she left, but she'd leave behind the person that had been her life for seventeen years behind if she stayed. Suddenly, what she'd wanted so badly for the past seven years didn't seem as desirable anymore.

She sighed, her mom stroking her back gently as she tried to come to terms with the gut wrenching decision she had to make. She looked at her mother, eyes seeking answers to a question she didn't really want to ask out loud, because then it would bring permenancy to the decision that needed to be made, and soon. Still she needed to know.

"How long do I have,Mom?How long do I have to decide whether or not I want to go with you, or stay?"

"Til tommorow night,sweetie. I'm sorry it's not longer."

Helena couldn't believe it. She had twenty four hours to decide whether she wanted to live, or die. Selina wrapped her arm around her, and spoke to her as she led her only child out of the room, through the wall.

"Come on, kitten. Let's take a walk."

They walked out just before he walked into the room.

Chapter 9

He'd heard she was here, the girl he'd only seen baby pictures of before now, and those were acquired from her mother's penthouse the day before the city had taken it in an emminant domain land grab for pennies on the dollar. His legs were no stronger than jello under him as he approached the figure lying prone in the bed. Now, as he looked behind himself, making sure he'd have privacy, he shut the door behind himself, and walked slowly, almost reverently, as though he were approaching a shrine to some diety instead of his own daughter's bed. He slowly removed his black felt fedora,the ratty black hawk feather in it sticking out like a sore thumb from where it was imprisoned securely in the band secured around it. He ran the rim in a complete circle once or twice, slowly, as though he were a boy being chastised by his mother, and fingering the hat to try and buy himself some time to come up with some defense of his wrong doings. He sat the hat down beside the uncomfortable, poorly laquered oak chair, covered in faux leather dyed an obscenely bright orange, a chair that, like him, had seen its better days. The wood showed it by the fingernail marks in the wood, and the spring poking him in the back from the backrest of the chair. He showed it by the wrinkles around his eyes, though in truth, he was only in his late forties, he looked ten years older. His once finely groomed, jet black hair, now hung scraggily around his shoulders, streaks of grey lining it again and again. His eyes, though, his eyes were still a mirror image of the woman lying in the bed, unbelievably sky blue.

When he sat down, he cleared his throat to speak, though his voice came out high, like a pre-pubecient boy just hitting adolescence,an almost undetectable whisper.

"Hi,it's me. It's Bruce. God knows I have no right to call myself your father. I haven't earned it. I wouldn't ask that of you, not yet, not until you're ready. And, I'll understand if we never get to that point.All I know is, Helena, I..." He choked on the tears when they came, though he did nothing to stop them. He raised his right hand, and, curling his gnarled fingers into a pointing gesture, stroked her unresponsive face with his pointer finger, slowly, gently, as though she'd break into a million pieces in his hands if he stroked any harder. Moving an errant lock of hair off her face,and tucking it behind her left ear, he found his voice again.

"I wanna be whatever you'll allow me to be. I wanna get to know you, Helena. I wanna know the sound of your laugh when someone tickles you, I wanna hold you when the world gets to be too much, I wanna dry your tears when you get your heart broken, or you watch "Lion King" and you cry when Simba's dad dies.Though, if you're anything like your mother, you won't admit a cartoon makes you cry." He chuckled slightly at the memory of Selina watching the movie with him, it had been one of their last truly happy moments. "I just wanna know the Helena Alexis Kyle everyone's told me so much about, but I wanna hear it from you. I know you're angry at me, I know the word "angry" probably doesn't begin to describe how pissed you are at me, at how mad you have every right to be. And I know, if you can hear me, you're probably rolling your eyes at me right now, because you've put up with so many excuses about why things had to be the way they were between us. You have to believe me when I say that up until your mother's death, I didn't even know you existed. Helena, your mom was unbelievably talented at covering her tracks, and she was so good at doing that that I didn't know that she was even pregnant, much less that I had a daughter out there. I didn't even know I had a daughter til that night that she...." Bruce still couldn't bring himself to admit Selina was dead, that he had failed her, that he had failed them both. Swallowing the lump in his throat, and talking through tears that burned canyons down his cheeks, he held her left hand in his, his hand completely engulfing hers. "and when I found out about you, I knew that I wasn't worthy of anything that came from someone as angelic as Selina Kyle, even if I was blessed enough to have had part in making it. I knew that Barbara wasn't a failure, like I was, and that your mother chose wisely when she chose Barbara Gordon as your guardian. I couldn't offer you anything but the life of a recluse, half crazed with grief over his failures. Barbara, at the very least she could offer you some simblance of normalcy, and that's what you needed. And I can see, she's done exceptionally well. I'm proud of her, and you."

A voice he hadn't heard in years made him jump.

"High praise from Batman. When Helena wakes up, I'm sure she'll be honored, too."

He turned to see his former protege in the wheelchair that the Joker's bullet had left her in.


	4. chapter 14

Chapter 13

Her mind drifted, and suddenly, she was there again. A night two years prior. She'd had a rough day at the high school, proctoring exit exams. Somehow, she'd talked herself into getting into the specially equipped porcelain tub that she'd gotten as a birthday gift from Helena a few months before. She loved it, as it had special jacuzzi jets that massaged every part of her body. But she found that it wasn't practical to use everyday, as she usually only had time to catch a quick shower before going to bed from her "night job". On that night, however, things had been different. The Delphi had been quiet, without so much as a false burglar alarm to the night's credit, and since, owing to the graduation exams, she had no papers to grade, she'd decided to pamper herself. After all, even Oracle deserved a night off, right?

So, with Richard Marx's "Now and Forever" drifting in on the hidden sound system, and after lighting several small, white votive candles and shaking out the match, she removed her robe and sank slowly into the hot water, letting the white froth the jets made encompass her lithe body. She sighed contentedly, letting the massaging fingers of water do their work, and she closed her eyes. Even though she knew she shouldn't fall asleep in the tub, denying Morpheus was getting extremely difficult. As she ran the vanilla extract soap over her body, washing away tension along with the day's muck, she heard the unmistakable sound of the door to her bedroom being opened, and someone walking towards the closed bathroom door. She hadn't heard any alarms, so it must be someone who knew the security code to the tower. So that meant that it was feasibly one of two people. Helena or Alfred. Still, never being one to put her guard down, she reached for the birdarang in the satchel attached to her chair, and, fitting the weapon in her hand, she watched for whomever would be on the other side of the door, preparing for them as she pulled her right arm across her face, ready to throw if an intruder showed themselves. As her breathing reached its apex, she saw who it was, and spoke.

"What are you doing here?"

The brunette entered and closed the door behind herself. By the way she was walking, Barbara could tell she'd been drinking more than a little. Her usual grace was gone, and she was stumbling, almost tripping over her own two feet. She'd made it to the toilet, and flopped down on the closed seat, putting her hands under her chin, and leaned towards the redhead, grinning a sloppy grin that would've been out of place had she not been inebriated.

"Oh, n..nuthing. Wha..what? I ca..can't stop by and see ya?"

"Helena, you're drunk.."

Helena stuck the pointer finger of her right hand in Barbara's face, the well manicured tip touching the redhead's nose, making Barbara's eyes cross to meet it. The brunette spoke, her other hand flying wildly up into the air, with no destination in particular in mind. She giggled as she spoke.

"You are correct, sir!"

Barbara didn't need to ask why the brunette was so drunk. She knew all too well. The brunette got this plastered every year on this day, she had ever since her mother's death, even before she was legal drinking age. The contrasts between Helena's personality before her mother's death and after it couldn't have been greater. Before Selina Kyle's death, Helena's behavior had been mischievous, but it could all be attributed to the harmless desire for fun that was innate in all teenagers the world over, a desire for fun that, while irritating, generally left everyone involved punished by their elders, but unharmed.

After Selina's death, her personality changed so much that if one hadn't known her, they wouldn't have recognized her as the same person. She'd become morose and withdrawn, her formally ever present smile now practically non-existent, with the exception of when she was inebriated. It broke the redhead's heart that it took a drug to restore the formally giddily happy younger woman to her previous state of happiness, and she cursed whatever gods she could think of for making it so. She heard her former charge speak, and it shook her out of her reverie, and back to the present, catching the statement towards its tail end, however sloppily the words were uttered, she understood innately the first part of the sentence.

"...would've been 45 today."

Barbara sighed, knowing at least in part her former ward's pain, and steeling herself for the conversation she knew was inevitable.

"Listen, Hel, I need to get dressed. Let me meet you in the living room, and we'll talk there, okay?"

The brunette nodded slowly, stood shakily on her own wobbly feet, and stumbled out of the room, mumbling something about "having seen Barbara naked a million times, and not knowing why she chose to be modest now."

As soon as Helena was absent from the room, she rose from the tub, and flipped the switch to drain it. She took the grab bar in her hands and leveraged herself out, taking the off white, silk, thigh length nightgown and slipping it over her head, adjusting the drooping spaghetti string straps so they fit properly over her shoulders. She then took the matching robe and slipped it over her shoulders, putting her arms through the sleeves, and slowly, carefully tying the two straps that were on either side together, and thus hiding the flimsy gown under the modest cover.

As soon as she was settled in her chair, she mashed the control joystick forward, sending herself out of the room. As soon as she reached the living area, she saw the brunette splayed semi-bonelessly out on the couch, a position that was aided as much by her outrageous alcohol intake earlier in the evening as it was by any genetic contribution her equally graceful mother might have made. She smiled fondly at her former ward as she transferred herself from her chair to the black leather couch with a practiced ease.

She patted the couch seat next to her, and the brunette took it as her cue to move closer, though still not meeting the redhead's gaze, evidently finding something on the polished oak hardwood floor that was infinitely more worthy of her scrutiny.  
Barbara spoke.

"Hel, listen. I'm worried about you. I know you miss your mom, and I know how much it hurts to have to go through this every year.."

Helena snorted derisively at her friend's comment, finally meeting the redhead's gaze.

"You have no idea how much it hurts, Barbara.. not... n.. not a fucking clue. You have no idea what it is to have the one person who meant the world to you be fine one second, laughing and joking with you, and then the next, they're lying in your arms, bleeding to death, with you begging them not to abandon you, leaving you defenseless against a world that could care less whether you live or die. You have no idea what it is to feel that kind of loneliness. You have no idea what it is to be alone, and, and, an...and scared, feeling like maybe the people who said you couldn't make it on your own were right, and you're here just taking up space, and the sooner you stop breathing everyone else's air, the better."

Barbara had been livid all through Helena's haranguing accusations, she had been ready to tell the brunette exactly what she thought of her and her trite opinions, and to tell the younger woman exactly how wrong she was, until she looked up at the brunette She had been ready, until she saw the tears begin to fall down the thin woman's face, and she saw the emotional dam burst. As the brunette began to sob quietly, Barabara did what had become automatic over the years since Helena had lived with her. She pulled her into her arms, into a suffocating hug of comfort, all feelings of animosity towards her distraught friend automatically liquidated. She held the sobbing woman for several minutes, not daring to release her hold until she felt the brunette's returned embrace lessen, and her quiet sobs turn to hiccups. She felt Helena pull back, and as she put her right pointer finger under the brunette's chin to bring them to eye level, and whispered soothing nothings to her, she had no time to react as the brunette wrapped her right arm around Barbara's neck, and proceeded to bring her lips to meet the redhead's in a kiss that was passionate, and at the same time, exquisitely aching in its gentleness.

The shock wore into repose as Helena's tongue teased her former mentor's mouth open, and, with a moan that the older woman was shocked to realize was her own, she accepted the worship of her oral temple as readily as the brown haired supplicant gave it.

Realizing what was happening, Barbara pulled back from the kiss, gasping for air, her lips protesting their sadistic master's removal from their pleasure by aching from the loss, and sending some of Helena's taste onto her tongue to remind her of what she was giving up by breaking the oral caress. She spoke in a low, reverent whisper to the younger woman, who was staring at her with eyes that were an amazing mixture of blue flecked with honey gold.

"Helena, what do you think you're doing? I.. we can't do this, Helena. I know you're grieving for your mother, but this.. this isn't going to make you feel any better."

The answer hit her ears in a rolling, erotic growl, one that told the redhead that the time for rational decisions was soon going to be gone, so she'd best say something to restore sanity to the situation immediately. The brunette spoke in a deep, throaty voice backed by a gentle, insistent purr. Helena's mouth came within a hair's width of the redhead's before she spoke, her breath hot on Barbara's aching lips, she whispered to her.

"Let me make us both feel better. Let me take the pain away from both of us."

With that statement, and the meeting of their lips in an impassioned mating dance, Barbara's resolve melted, and as she wrapped her arms firmly around Helena's neck, she returned the kiss with as much passion as it had been given, her own tongue teasing Helena's mouth open and exploring reverently its inner corridors.

After a few moments of this, Helena gently, reverently lifted her precious redheaded cargo off the couch, and began slowly walking towards the stairs that would take them from the living area to Barbara's bedroom. So caught up in the moment was she that Helena failed to notice that she was heading directly for the lowered legrests of the redhead's wheelchair. Her left foot having cleared the obstacle, she felt the momentary sense of panic that engulfs a person when they realize that they're about to trip as she caught her right foot on the protruding pieces of iron. Sending her left foot forward to brace herself, only her enhanced reflexes saved her from spilling both herself and her passenger onto the hardwood floor. As it was, she half hopped two steps before regaining her equilibrium enough to continue her journey.

The rest of the trip uneventfully made, she laid Barbara onto the bed, and got atop her. Helena's eyes, Barbara noticed, had gone completely into their feral state. It was these amazing, slitted cat eyes that surveyed the older woman, taking in the older woman's tanned, well-muscled arms, the way the light in the room hit the gown she was wearing so that the silk looked like so much new fallen snow in contrast to the tanned skin it covered. She noticed the widened pupils, looking now like a black ocean surrounded in its circumference by a sliver of green. She noticed the way the light shown through her soon to be lover's hair, making it look like so much woven fire. She noticed the slim, deceivingly delicate hands that now gripped her biceps, waiting for her to finish what she had started, she noticed how the three inch, perfectly manicured nails drew idle circles around her own well developed arm muscles. But the one thing that she noticed was the heady pheromones the redhead was producing. Pheromones that the older woman, with her non-meta sense of smell, probably didn't even realize she was producing.

But the woman that was about to ravage her did smell them. And oh, God, what it did to her. She began to purr deep in her throat at the arousing scent, and began to lower her head to the other woman's neck, and slowly began sniffing, not stopping until she'd reached behind Barbara's ear.

It was what she did next that sent shivers down the other woman's spine. Helena took her tongue stud, and slowly, purposefully, began to lick down the back of the redhead's ear, licking as though she were trying to keep ice cream from melting on a hot day, and relishing the salty taste of her lover's skin like it was. She then began, starting at the top of the outer shell of Barbara's ear, to gently nibble a straight line down her ear, nipping ever so slightly harder when she reached where the earlobe attached to the rest of the older woman's face. She then began her descent down to Barbara's throat, kissing, licking, nipping and sucking her way over to her pulse point. She sucked it deep into her mouth, worshipping it with her tongue as though it were a beloved deity.

As the other woman squirmed beneath her in ecstacy, the brunette moved on to Barbara's collarbone, nipping her way to first the right spaghetti strap, then the left, kissing the bared shoulders of each as she lowered the offending thin pieces of material. It was then that she lifted the redhead up, and removed the garment totally, leaving the older woman completely exposed. Helena then took the opportunity to take off her own clothes, leaving them both totally naked. After doing this, she began to tease her partner's nipples by rubbing them with her own. She then reached down and began to suckle the freckled breasts that were before her.

With yellowed eyes so hazed with desire, and a mouth that sported a smile so devilish it should've been considered the eighth deadly sin, Helena spoke to her now completely entranced paramour without ever releasing the tooth imprisoned nipple from its restraint.

"God, Barbara, you taste so fucking good."

Her left hand never leaving the diamond hard tip of the redhead's breast, continuing its tweaking, teasing and pulling, the brunette kissed and nipped her way down the older woman's torso in a straight line, stopping momentarily to dip her tongue stud into her lover's belly button, first sucking, then nipping the bottom of it gently as she continued her desent towards the red valley of hair that she sought at the juncture of the redhead's muscular legs. Slowly, gently dipping her nose inside the valley, she for the first time fulfilled years of teenaged wet dreams as she smelled the sweet and salty odor of nirvana in the liquid the redhead was producing in bounty. Nosing the clit, she tasted it gently, reverently with her tongue, as though she'd just arrived at Mount Olympus, and she was being given by Hermes the ambrosia and nectar that would grant her immortality. She then took the throbbing bud into her mouth, and nipped it with her teeth, before delving inside the older  
woman's valley, where she began to lick and suck at the juices in earnest.

Moments later, she began inserting two fingers into the redhead, slowly pumping in and out, playing with the clit with her thumb. She continued to murmur encouragement to Barbara as she felt the redhead's inner wall begin to spasm, and she felt the older woman grab her head by the hair roughly, and kiss her, her tongue hot and probing into the younger woman's mouth, moaning the words "Fuck yes" into the brunette's mouth as her climax overtook her.

As they clung together, their lips never parting, still embroiled in the passionate kiss that had taken Barbara over the edge into blissful orgasm, Helena felt her partner's hands beginning to roam down her body, Barbara's left hand on her right breast, while the other pushed the brunette down onto the mattress. The redhead wasn't far behind her in returning to a supine position on top of her. The older woman kissed and licked her way down Helena's squirming body, her left hand still not ready to relinquish its domination of the younger woman's breast. Finally, her mouth finding Helena's shaved valley, she started worshipping the soaked, small, rock hard nub she found there. Scraping the nail of her pointer finger across it in a beckoning motion, she ran her four other digits up and down the slit, slowly beginning her entrance into Helena's cleft. Reaching across to kiss and nip her lover's right inner thigh, she plunged two fingers home as she looked up into the brunette's eyes, as they squeezed tight in both ecstacy and pain. Barbara's digits met a little resistance, though for a second she gave a thought to the fact that it felt as though she'd just pushed through something. She thought for a split second that the other woman might've been a virgin, but such thoughts quickly lost the nescience (?) with her. She'd seen the brunette with countless suitors, both male and female. There was no way the other woman was still virginal. Perhaps it had been a while since her last encounter, and that explained it. It had to.

The squirming woman beneath her brought her back to reality with the utterance of three words as she came. With Barbara's last thrust, the one that brought her lover over the edge, she heard the words "I love you", whispered along with her name, as the other woman finally orgasmed.

Chapter 14

As the sun of the new day hit Barbara squarely in the eyes, she moaned in irritation, and raised her left hand to her face to rub Morpheus' dust from her eyes.She tried to raise her right in the same fashion, so as to more throughly extrecate the previous night's refuse from her eyes, but she suddenly realized something warm and heavy was lying on her hand, keeping her from doing so. Suddenly, she realized that it wasn't a something, but a very nude _someone. _A someone who was waking up, and beginning to turn her way. Then, the night before played itself out on the back of her tightly shut eyelids. And if it was the someone she thought, she'd just damned herself to a very, very deep part of Hell.

She heard that voice yawn, and sleepy mumble an extra cheery "good morning", and she heard, rather than saw, every joint in her bedmate's body pop while a stretch Barbara had seen her do a million times when they'd lived in the same domicile, a stretch that reminded the redhead so much of the younger woman's mother's cats doing so, the kind that involved the enjoyment of every fiber of the creature's being, or so it seemed. Then, what she'd dreaded the younger woman would do happened. As she opened her eyes to the brunette, she saw Helena's mouth move towards her own, in an expected expression of love. She'd known ever since the younger woman declared her love as she'd climaxed the night before that she'd have to deal with this awkward moment come the morning. So, as the kiss bruised lips of the other woman came towards her own, the redhead froze, if only for a second. Which was all the time the younger woman needed to pick up on the rejection, and have her heart ripped in two with a flaming, rusty knife. As Helena felt the older woman's rebuff of her affection, she first turned, swinging long, sveulte legs over the side of the bed, turning her back to the older woman she'd thought wanted the same, felt the same, as she did.

Then, Barbara saw something that made her cringe. While the brunette's back was turned to her, she saw the younger woman do something she hadn't seen since right after her mother had died, during the aftermath of the countless nights of holding after an all too vivid nightmare, in which she'd see her mother's death replayed again and again, the nightmare was always the same. Helena a helpless bystander, watching the woman who was her life getting stabbed, run through the chest with a seven inch switchblade, and she being helpless to stop it. The part that woke her up screaming, she'd later confide in the redhead, was the something that happened in the dream that hadn't in the real event. Her mother dying in her arms, looking up and asking the seventeen year old why she hadn't stopped it from happening. Everytime Barbara had held the young woman in her arms, she'd been shuddering, a deep, body ache type of shudder, but she never cried, at least not then. It was this same shuddering without release that faced the redhead now, as the other woman refused to turn to meet her gaze. But Helena's first words after being rejected that made Barbara truly want to crawl into a hole, and bury herself in the deepest part of it, waiting for Lucifer himself to come gather her for the torment in Hell she knew she deserved.

Her ears were assaulted with the pain in the other woman's voice as she spoke, the words of the pained nightmare of a terrified child echoed in her statement.

"Why didn't you stop it, Barbara?"

With that statement, and the meeting of their lips in an impassioned mating dance, Barbara's resolve melted, and as she wrapped her arms firmly around Helena's neck, she returned the kiss with as much passion as it had been given, her own tongue teasing Helena's mouth open and exploring reverently its inner corridors.

After a few moments of this, Helena gently, reverently lifted her precious redheaded cargo off the couch, and began slowly walking towards the stairs that would take them from the living area to Barbara's bedroom. So caught up in the moment was she that Helena failed to notice that she was heading directly for the lowered legrests of the redhead's wheelchair. Her left foot having cleared the obstacle, she felt the momentary sense of panic that engulfs a person when they realize that they're about to trip as she caught her right foot on the protruding pieces of iron. Sending her left foot forward to brace herself, only her enhanced reflexes saved her from spilling both herself and her passenger onto the hardwood floor. As it was, she half hopped two steps before regaining her equilibrium enough to continue her journey.

The rest of the trip uneventfully made, she laid Barbara onto the bed, and got atop her. Helena's eyes, Barbara noticed, had gone completely into their feral state. It was these amazing, slitted cat eyes that surveyed the older woman, taking in the older woman's tanned, well-muscled arms, the way the light in the room hit the gown she was wearing so that the silk looked like so much new fallen snow in contrast to the tanned skin it covered. She noticed the widened pupils, looking now like a black ocean surrounded in its circumference by a sliver of green. She noticed the way the light shown through her soon to be lover's hair, making it look like so much woven fire. She noticed the slim, deceivingly delicate hands that now gripped her biceps, waiting for her to finish what she had started, she noticed how the three inch, perfectly manicured nails drew idle circles around her own well developed arm muscles. But the one thing that she noticed was the heady pheromones the redhead was producing. Pheromones that the older woman, with her non-meta sense of smell, probably didn't even realize she was producing.

But the woman that was about to ravage her did smell them. And oh, God, what it did to her. She began to purr deep in her throat at the arousing scent, and began to lower her head to the other woman's neck, and slowly began sniffing, not stopping until she'd reached behind Barbara's ear.

It was what she did next that sent shivers down the other woman's spine. Helena took her tongue stud, and slowly, purposefully, began to lick down the back of the redhead's ear, licking as though she were trying to keep ice cream from melting on a hot day, and relishing the salty taste of her lover's skin like it was. She then began, starting at the top of the outer shell of Barbara's ear, to gently nibble a straight line down her ear, nipping ever so slightly harder when she reached where the earlobe attached to the rest of the older woman's face. She then began her descent down to Barbara's throat, kissing, licking, nipping and sucking her way over to her pulse point. She sucked it deep into her mouth, worshipping it with her tongue as though it were a beloved deity.

As the other woman squirmed beneath her in ecstacy, the brunette moved on to Barbara's collarbone, nipping her way to first the right spaghetti strap, then the left, kissing the bared shoulders of each as she lowered the offending thin pieces of material. It was then that she lifted the redhead up, and removed the garment totally, leaving the older woman completely exposed. Helena then took the opportunity to take off her own clothes, leaving them both totally naked. After doing this, she began to tease her partner's nipples by rubbing them with her own. She then reached down and began to suckle the freckled breasts that were before her.

With yellowed eyes so hazed with desire, and a mouth that sported a smile so devilish it should've been considered the eighth deadly sin, Helena spoke to her now completely entranced paramour without ever releasing the tooth imprisoned nipple from its restraint.

"God, Barbara, you taste so fucking good."

Her left hand never leaving the diamond hard tip of the redhead's breast, continuing its tweaking, teasing and pulling, the brunette kissed and nipped her way down the older woman's torso in a straight line, stopping momentarily to dip her tongue stud into her lover's belly button, first sucking, then nipping the bottom of it gently as she continued her desent towards the red valley of hair that she sought at the juncture of the redhead's muscular legs. Slowly, gently dipping her nose inside the valley, she for the first time fulfilled years of teenaged wet dreams as she smelled the sweet and salty odor of nirvana in the liquid the redhead was producing in bounty. Nosing the clit, she tasted it gently, reverently with her tongue, as though she'd just arrived at Mount Olympus, and she was being given by Hermes the ambrosia and nectar that would grant her immortality. She then took the throbbing bud into her mouth, and nipped it with her teeth, before delving inside the older  
woman's valley, where she began to lick and suck at the juices in earnest.

Moments later, she began inserting two fingers into the redhead, slowly pumping in and out, playing with the clit with her thumb. She continued to murmur encouragement to Barbara as she felt the redhead's inner wall begin to spasm, and she felt the older woman grab her head by the hair roughly, and kiss her, her tongue hot and probing into the younger woman's mouth, moaning the words "Fuck yes" into the brunette's mouth as her climax overtook her.

As they clung together, their lips never parting, still embroiled in the passionate kiss that had taken Barbara over the edge into blissful orgasm, Helena felt her partner's hands beginning to roam down her body, Barbara's left hand on her right breast, while the other pushed the brunette down onto the mattress. The redhead wasn't far behind her in returning to a supine position on top of her. The older woman kissed and licked her way down Helena's squirming body, her left hand still not ready to relinquish its domination of the younger woman's breast. Finally, her mouth finding Helena's shaved valley, she started worshipping the soaked, small, rock hard nub she found there. Scraping the nail of her pointer finger across it in a beckoning motion, she ran her four other digits up and down the slit, slowly beginning her entrance into Helena's cleft. Reaching across to kiss and nip her lover's right inner thigh, she plunged two fingers home as she looked up into the brunette's eyes, as they squeezed tight in both ecstacy and pain. Barbara's digits met a little resistance, though for a second she gave a thought to the fact that it felt as though she'd just pushed through something. She thought for a split second that the other woman might've been a virgin, but such thoughts quickly lost the nescience (?) with her. She'd seen the brunette with countless suitors, both male and female. There was no way the other woman was still virginal. Perhaps it had been a while since her last encounter, and that explained it. It had to.

The squirming woman beneath her brought her back to reality with the utterance of three words as she came. With Barbara's last thrust, the one that brought her lover over the edge, she heard the words "I love you", whispered along with her name, as the other woman finally orgasmed.

Chapter 14

As the sun of the new day hit Barbara squarely in the eyes, she moaned in irritation, and raised her left hand to her face to rub Morpheus' dust from her eyes.She tried to raise her right in the same fashion, so as to more throughly extrecate the previous night's refuse from her eyes, but she suddenly realized something warm and heavy was lying on her hand, keeping her from doing so. Suddenly, she realized that it wasn't a something, but a very nude _someone. _A someone who was waking up, and beginning to turn her way. Then, the night before played itself out on the back of her tightly shut eyelids. And if it was the someone she thought, she'd just damned herself to a very, very deep part of Hell.

She heard that voice yawn, and sleepy mumble an extra cheery "good morning", and she heard, rather than saw, every joint in her bedmate's body pop while a stretch Barbara had seen her do a million times when they'd lived in the same domicile, a stretch that reminded the redhead so much of the younger woman's mother's cats doing so, the kind that involved the enjoyment of every fiber of the creature's being, or so it seemed. Then, what she'd dreaded the younger woman would do happened. As she opened her eyes to the brunette, she saw Helena's mouth move towards her own, in an expected expression of love. She'd known ever since the younger woman declared her love as she'd climaxed the night before that she'd have to deal with this awkward moment come the morning. So, as the kiss bruised lips of the other woman came towards her own, the redhead froze, if only for a second. Which was all the time the younger woman needed to pick up on the rejection, and have her heart ripped in two with a flaming, rusty knife. As Helena felt the older woman's rebuff of her affection, she first turned, swinging long, sveulte legs over the side of the bed, turning her back to the older woman she'd thought wanted the same, felt the same, as she did.

Then, Barbara saw something that made her cringe. While the brunette's back was turned to her, she saw the younger woman do something she hadn't seen since right after her mother had died, during the aftermath of the countless nights of holding after an all too vivid nightmare, in which she'd see her mother's death replayed again and again, the nightmare was always the same. Helena a helpless bystander, watching the woman who was her life getting stabbed, run through the chest with a seven inch switchblade, and she being helpless to stop it. The part that woke her up screaming, she'd later confide in the redhead, was the something that happened in the dream that hadn't in the real event. Her mother dying in her arms, looking up and asking the seventeen year old why she hadn't stopped it from happening. Everytime Barbara had held the young woman in her arms, she'd been shuddering, a deep, body ache type of shudder, but she never cried, at least not then. It was this same shuddering without release that faced the redhead now, as the other woman refused to turn to meet her gaze. But Helena's first words after being rejected that made Barbara truly want to crawl into a hole, and bury herself in the deepest part of it, waiting for Lucifer himself to come gather her for the torment in Hell she knew she deserved.

Her ears were assaulted with the pain in the other woman's voice as she spoke, the words of the pained nightmare of a terrified child echoed in her statement.

"Why didn't you stop it, Barbara?"


End file.
